Her Motive
by Riley Green
Summary: She needs to save them all.
1. Prologue

**Title:** Her Motive  
**Author: **Riley Green  
**Email Address:**   
**Pairing:** Martin/Sam Eventually  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Summary:** She needs to save them all.  
**Disclaimer: **I own NOTHING!

Thanks to everyone at Destined who has already read and reviewed. I love you guys!

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My mother is a hero.

Sure, not in the traditional sense of the word. At least not the kind of hero I remember from the cartoons we used to watch on Saturday mornings.

She can't fly, she doesn't have X-ray vision, she's certainly not super-human but she is a hero all the same.

She _saves_ people.

Sometimes from their own family, sometimes from complete strangers and sometimes even from themselves.

I watch her with a sense of pride, an aching delight that bursts from inside me when all signs point to a dead end and she gets that look on her face that I know so well.

It's a look that promises this is not the end.

She has not given up.

She never does.

And sometimes she wins, rewarded with a resolution that lets her go home at night and smile, sleep peacefully.

Other times there's no end, an open book, an unfinished story that leaves her angry that she doesn't have the power to do more, find them all.

The worst is death. A resolution that leaves neither a sense of relief nor a sense of hope. It's a slammed door, the final credits, and a sworn promise written on her own heart that tomorrow she's going to find the next one alive.

I wish then that there's someone to _save her._ Her own knight in shining armor to kiss away her tears and promise her brighter tomorrows.

Who knows, maybe one day there will be. Right now, she's all alone though. But it won't be long.

I wonder sometimes what compelled her to do this.

It's something I never asked but I wish I had.

What pushed her to put her life on the line, to unravel the webs of stranger's lives, to discover their secrets?

Especially when she's harboring so many of her own.

In my heart I believe I know why she does it all.

Why she chose the job, why she invests so much in every single case, why when it all seems to be falling apart she can't give up, won't give up.

Who is she doing all this for really? Is it all for the victims and their families? Is helping complete strangers what it's all about? She's compassionate but I know there's more to it.

Is it just a job that pays the bills and gives her a sense of purpose? She had to do something with her life right?

Maybe it's a way of proving to all those disbelievers that Samantha Spade has amounted to so much more than anyone ever thought she would. She has, but she's never been one to live her life trying to make other people happy.

Perhaps it is really for her.

Is she trying to escape the demons of her past by making a difference in the future? Is she trying to save every family she meets, the agony she knows only too well herself?

That's what it's really all about for my mother.

She needs to _save_ them all.

Because in the end…she couldn't _save_ me.


	2. Vanished

Thanks to all who read and reviewed. Hope you enjoy this next installment.

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**Chapter One - Vanished**

My mother is broken.

With one look you know that there are a million secrets in the darkness of her eyes and somehow you can't help yourself. You want to know more. You _have _to know more.

You want to break down that wall that she's so carefully constructed and understand, even just a tiny bit, of what makes her Samantha Spade.

There are few people who possess that power. Even fewer, that when it all comes down to it are willing to accept her for the way she is. Walls and baggage and all.

She will never let go of her secrets. They're a part of her. So deeply ingrained in who she is that they might be mistaken for DNA.

I wonder if she will ever tell someone, anyone. Whether anyone in this world, in her mind, is worthy enough to bear the burden of her secrets.

Secrets aren't supposed to be kept. They're meant to be shared. A kept secret will do nothing but break you, until beyond the secret and its pain there's nothing left at all.

I sometimes look at her and believe that she really will be haunted by her past, our past forever.

She's never trusted a single person enough to share. Not Danny or Vivian. Not even Jack who despite all his own baggage showed my mother what love was capable of being.

All they know if what she's told them. Bare minimum details that peak through every now and again when that wall begins to crumble slightly from fatigue.

And today Martin Fitzgerald walked into her life like he belonged there all along.

And he smiled.

And I knew in that smile there was something special, that this was a man that if my mother could find conviction in him, I could trust him with my mother's fragile heart.

Maybe in the end, he'll make it all better. He'll love her and protect her in ways I no longer can.

He'll be there when a case goes wrong and past and present mingle in the emptiness of her fifth floor apartment. She'll fall apart as she always does but I'll no longer be her only spectator.

I wish I could hug her then. You know, in that way she used to hug me. So tight I knew she'd never ever let go. A hug that healed all bruises and scrapes, dried all tears and promised so much for every tomorrow.

Tonight it's ok though, even though she's still alone in every sense of the word. Tonight it's happily ever after. At least for Maggie Cartwright and her family.

And in my mother's empty apartment she could breathe a sigh of relief. Today she had made a difference just as she had set out to do. And that's what it is all about. Saving people. And also in the process, saving herself.

There is no need for an agonizing night spent like so many passed, pouring over papers, pieces of a life, running down a million theories in her head until no option is left entirely unexamined.

Instead there's a glass of red wine and a long hot shower to rid her of the day. A ritual I've noticed, that I suppose is a way to focus, however briefly, on her own life.

And when she finally collapses on her bed under layers of blankets and I blow her goodnight kisses, she feels that glimmer of hope that I myself planted.

Her heart still echoes with that familiar emptiness that has haunted her for as long as can be remembered. It's an echo of realization that is always more prominent at night. Always stronger at the end of a good day. Always there.

One life has been saved. A thousand more will go missing, and the most important of all, me, could never truly be saved.

But tonight, as profound as that echo is and always will be that flicker of hope is burning somewhere deep inside my mother's heart.

Because today, she met Martin Fitzgerald.

And he smiled.


	3. Birthday Boy

**Chapter Two - Birthday Boy**

My mother sweats determination.

It's an admirable trait, in my opinion, her own mother often mistook for stubbornness. "You're just like your father," my Grandmother would harp, sending my mother into an infamous moody silence my Grandmother detested even more.

That determination makes my mother a force to reckon with. Giving up is _the_ most foreign of concepts in her world and it's only under the most intense duress and the most mitigating circumstances that she finally, and reluctantly concedes.

You can see that will in the shadows of her eyes. That resolution, that comes from past secrets, to keep at it even when the answers are scarce and there are dead ends at every turn.

Gabe Freedman is nothing more than a child.

And when a child goes missing my heart aches as I watch and I wait for that fortitude to explode and consume my mother from head to toe.

It takes a trained eye to see the silent shift in her as a heart makes decisions that her mind knows are perpetually unrealistic.

She _can_ work for hours on end, long into the night, with only darkness and static pieces of a life for company. She _can _chase down every lead, turn over every stone. And she _can _make promises to herself. Only to herself, that she will bring _this_ child home.

There's nothing worse than false promises. She's been there. She's been the parent on the receiving end of such promises. And she's been the parent to see every single promise disappear into nothingness.

She won't make promises anymore, it's not productive. It's not fair to give other parents a false sense of hope when there is no guarantee that a happy ending is within reach.

That doesn't mean she won't make them to herself. Promises that she will try her hardest. That giving up only comes when the candle is nothing more than a puddle of unsalvageable wax. That a family _will _have that happy ending and she, she will maintain her sanity, at least this time.

No one else sees the flicker in her eyes. The tiny sparks of a memory here and there, that if allowed would consume her thoughts and reduce her to a puddle of weakness before seizing her mind and taking her on a heart shattering journey of 'what ifs'.

I know her 'what ifs' as well as I know my own. But 'what ifs' can't be allowed to consume you. And I won't let them devour her. They don't exist, not really. They're nothing more than eternal questions for which there will never be any answers. Just more questions. They shouldn't be allowed. Banished to the land of 'wherever's' and 'maybes' and tentative promises that are destined to remain unfulfilled.

It was a casual insignificant comment by Gabe's teacher that took my mother to the land of 'what ifs' today.

"_Birthday's are stupid." _Gabe had told her.

And the darkness possessed my mother ever so briefly. A memory so insignificant I barely remembered it myself. But it captured my mother, transported her mind across realms and time to a moment she had never let go of.

She speaks to me in that moment, and I look closer but her lips aren't moving. It's only a memory. Nothing more than a couple of voices echoing through two minds and two worlds.

"_Your birthday is the most special day of the year."_

I hear my own voice asking her 'why' in a time when I perpetually asked that question, determined, like my mother, to find answers for everything.

"_Because," _she answers simply as if the answer had been obvious all along, _"It was the best day of my life."_

And just like that the memory fades and she focuses again on the task at hand, determination burning just as strong, even if the new resolve stems from that old notion that finding Gabe, no matter how different the situation, is merely a substitute for finding me.

She's strong, she won't break. And despite the memories that burst through that ultra tough façade she will finish this case alongside the rest of the team.

Now she's on a mission. Perhaps she'll see my eyes instead of Gabe's.

This case will no longer be just another lost child, just another number. Another timeline that can and will be erased, another face on the whiteboard that at the end of it all she can go home and forget.

She doesn't really ever forget although she likes to pretend she does. I know she remembers each one they've found. Each one they've failed. Each story that still remains unfinished. She's a great pretender.

"_Are you ok?"_

"_I'm fine."_

And she believes it herself.

She can fool herself into believing that this was exactly the way she wanted her life to be.

I'm not fooled.

Nobody wants to be so completely alone.

So lost in what has come and gone that the future appears nothing more than a mere extension of the past.

Sooner or later she won't be alone, and she won't be lost though.

Because her own hero has already made his entrance despite the fact she is somewhat oblivious to the role he will play.

I know, I know it all.

And thank God for Martin Fitzgerald. He just might be an angel I've decided.

I wonder if somewhere inside of her, in that heart that has far too long been a closed book to the world, my mother sees what _I _already know and love about him.

He will be the one to save her.

One day.


	4. He Saw, She Saw

**Her Motive**

**Chapter Three – He Saw, She Saw**

My mother is always running.

She's been running since she could walk. Looking for a way out, a new beginning, a better life.

She always has hope that it's out there. That something is out there, just waiting for her.

These days however, something in her has changed. A light was flicked on, a candle lit and suddenly she's lost that undeniable urge to leave everything behind and start all over again in a place that has never heard tell of Samantha Spade.

Perhaps this means the days of running are over. She knows just as well as anyone that you can't run forever. Eventually the past catches up with everyone and you are forced to face that which you would do anything to avoid meeting again.

My mother knows this well.

She knows she can't ever really outrun the past. But at the moment she won't confront it either. It's a monster too terrifying to face just yet. A monster that haunts her dreams and tugs at her heart constantly. For now she's content having run as far as she has, living in her little world of blissful denial.

New York really is a city made just for her. A city with a foundation of infinite dreams, a million possibilities, a thousand tomorrows and plenty of people that need saving.

Every person that comes, like my mother, has run from somewhere, from something with optimistism that New York will remake them into someone they always dreamed they would be. My mother has not changed nearly as much as she likes to think she has. She's still the same little girl always running scared inside while trying to prove to the world just how tough she is.

Tonight, my mother opts to walk home, the day playing over in her mind as so many have before. The night air makes her feel alive when her thoughts both past and present consume her. And sometimes she needs that sense to remind her that 'alive' is a state of being, not a feeling at all.

It's hard to feel alive when you allow the pain of others to seep into your heart and add to your own. Being alone is like that. The worst thoughts, the stuff that nightmares are made of, plague the silence of loneliness. So she fills her life with noise whenever she can. At work there's banter. Danny, Viv, Jack, Martin. Someone is always talking. At home there's music usually or sometimes the echo of the television playing unobtrusively in the background.

Somehow that settles her.

Like someone is there with her.

I wish she could know that I am.

I'm always with her, no matter how much of a disbeliever she is in that sort of thing. I know the finest details of her life, and I understand her, so much deeper than I ever did when I was alive.

Tonight the post-work ritual is different than usual. Tonight it's not about letting go of a victim she can identify far too closely with although that may be the case.

Emily Muller lost a daughter. So did Samantha Spade.

But that similarity doesn't faze her. It's about letting go of something else tonight. Or maybe it's about holding on. She doesn't quite know. Whatever it is, it's about Jack Malone.

The red wine, the cleansing shower, the same routine that I've seen so many times before is an attempt to wash him away again. To remind herself that part of her life is well and truly over. That loving him always was a mistake, and his promises always were empty.

"_Maria and I separated," _he had told her earlier when she questioned the undoubted pain-filled expression he wore. She acts as if she never saw it coming.

I want to scream at her for a second, make her hear my warning although I know the impossibility of it all. I want a tantrum, an outburst loud enough to cross the barriers between our worlds and stop what I already know is happening.

She's falling again.

There's a tiny hope that he'll catch her and everything will be perfect.

She wears a mask of compassion, one of many she owns, and pretends this news upsets her, but inside, in a place only the two of us truly have access to, she's secretly happy.

She's always kept Jack Malone on a pedestal. Always wondered if he is the man who will eventually rescue her from herself. Always trusted that if it was meant to be there would be a sign.

And a separation from his wife seems to my mother like a pretty good one.

Will he be the first to know the deep buried secrets of Samantha Spade that no man has yet to uncover? And will he be the first man in a life of broken promises to make my mother believe in love? Who knows? That's what time is for. It tells all. Eventually.

She's caught in indecision now. She wants to just fall and let Jack catch her and love her but there's a seed in her heart, planted by me and her own distrust of men who play with vulnerable hearts, that grows with long held fear that more hours of hurt are just around the corner if she allows him into her heart again.

She downs another glass of wine and I watch her tentatively reach for the phone. The number she's ready to dial at the front of her mind, the words that need to be spoken nothing more than an incoherent mess it will take her days to unravel.

She won't do it. Tonight her strength has already ebbed and she won't risk sharing the fears written on her heart without it.

I think of Martin, riding in on his white horse and saving the day. A man whose promises I have no doubt are worth there weight in gold, who's smile promises more than a million words spoken by any other man . But at the moment the hopes for Martin and my mother are nothing more than the intense imagination of a six year old stuck forever in time, asking questions of the stars, wondering if this is the man who will be my mother's hero?

I know she doesn't really need a hero. That what she really needs is far simpler and much less exciting. All she needs is a hand. To pull her from that hole that she's been living in for so long. I fear Jack may be pushing her further into the darkness while I'm desperately rooting for her to pull herself out.

Tonight it will be my hand that she holds onto. Anything to save her from the hurt that is inevitable when Jack Malone is playing games with her heart. I lend her my own strength when her own gets too weak and throw her love from afar to reassure her when there's nothing more for me to do.

It's nothing like it should be. There shouldn't be worlds between us.

But there are.

Sometimes nothing is as it should be.

But then again, who's to say what 'should be' should be?


	5. Between The Cracks

**Her Motive**

**Chapter Four – Between the Cracks**

My mother has nightmares where she cannot find me.

The kind of nightmares that wake her from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, tugging her towards reality drenched in sweat and reaching for the bedside lamp to drive away the darkness.

Her dreams are the worst kind there is because when consciousness has claimed her again the reality is just as bad. Maybe worse. Just like in her dreams she cannot find me. I'll never be found again.

They found me once. Face down beside a lake that had once been a favorite place my mother and I swam during the summer. The FBI cavalry came rushing in with the hope that somehow I had survived that which befell me.

They were wrong and my mother wished with everything in her heart that they would put me back where I had been and find me somewhere else.

Alive.

Her wishes however were not to be heard by anyone that mattered enough and all the wishes in the world could not change the circumstances surrounding my disappearance nor my state of being when a young FBI agent stumbled upon my body.

"_You are too good for this world," _my mother had reassured me in a whisper at my funeral.

She stood on the freshly cut green grass in her new black shoes and cursed the heavens for a day too bright and optimistic to bury her only child. She needed the rain. A storm would have suited her fine, so they could huddle together in their best black clothes, under their black umbrellas and farewell me the way it was supposed to be done.

The dreams are never as prominent as when a case ends badly. When Samantha Spade is forced to get up close and personal with death in ways she swears black and blue each time she cannot cope with again.

There's a realization that comes with a meeting with death, and it overwhelms her at each chance encounter, again and again. There is nothing she can do to stop it taking someone else.

Today Samantha Spade lost a piece of her heart.

It fell standing in that morgue beside Mrs. Radowski. Fell right out of her, in the middle of a breath that hitched somewhere in the back of her throat.

Somehow it was all too frighteningly reminiscent of that opaque past that seemed to make a haunting appearance far too frequently in her daily life.

Seven years ago my mother had stood in a cold sterile morgue alongside a solemn young FBI agent in much the same fashion to ID _her_ own daughter.

She knew the feelings. The overwhelming urge to not believe what is right in front of you begging you to recognize it for all it is balanced precariously with a forlorn sense of relief for a hellish resolution to a living nightmare.

After all, resolution is better than never knowing at all. A human mind can go crazy when the possibilities are endless.

It was all my mother could do in that morgue not to cry herself. But the tough FBI agent overpowered the always suffering mother and the tears remained unshed, at least for the time being.

"_I couldn't help feeling like it was a little familiar to you," _Martin had commented on their earlier return from Indiana.

My mother was elusive in her usual way. Not offering anything substantial at all. _"Could be."_

No agreement, no denial.

A smile shared and for a second I saw the stars shine brighter.

If only Martin knew more. If only my mother realized what was right in front of her, maybe there wouldn't be any nightmares tonight.

We could both rest easy.

If only Martin knew just _how _familiar it all was.


	6. Suspect

**Ok, so I got myself completely confused and left out a couple of chapters! A million apologies it's all in the right order now!**

**I hope you enjoy.

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****Chapter Five – Suspect**

My mother is a warrior.

She's always at war. Fighting secrets, fighting for answers, fighting herself until she's too tired to fight anymore.

She fights to be respected in a male dominated profession, to find answers when sometimes there just doesn't seem to be any. But the most important fight of all comes from deep inside her. A war between her heart and mind that's been waging for years with not a peace treaty or truce in sight.

Her mind is strong. Her heart weak after years of holding onto secrets and half-truths that are eating her from the inside out.

The war that takes place inside Samantha Spade is never-ending. Neither side will ever surrender. They need each other to go on and much like the person they inhibit, they don't like to lose. After all, what good is a mind without a heart to lead it where it truly needs to go? And there is nothing left of a heart when a mind is not there to rationalize and think ahead.

These days, my mother fights her war to help others, that's just her way of dealing. Other kids just like me, vulnerable and just beginning to realize the real life evil that exists outside of cartoons and movies. She fights to help the families, grief stricken, falling apart with fear, living with a sense of denial. Hoping for the best and yet expecting the very worst.

She knows each one of them intimately it seems. Their thoughts, their feelings, their desperation that appear foreign to others and easily over looked are all too familiar to her.

Samantha Spade was in desperate need of her mask of indifference today as a case hit a little to close to her fractured heart.

The war raged out of control as emotion and rationale coupled with professionalism battled it out for ultimate possession.

The desire to hold onto her secret was what it all came down to. Emotion suppressed, saved for the dark confines of her apartment and the company of no one but me. Rationale and professionalism then took their rightful place in her demeanor. No one guessed the battle that had been fought for them to get there. No one would ever know.

I've always wondered why her secrets are so important. Guarded with nothing less than her life. But I suppose it's really quite simple when you think about it. A secret isn't a secret anymore if you share it. Until then, no one knows of its existence but you. By protecting her secret my mother is essentially holding onto me. Gripping me so tightly it sometimes hurts. Pretending what happened, never really did. And if she does that it can never really be real.

I wish I could tell her that holding on is sometimes worse than letting go. But in the grand scheme of things, this is her war, not mine and all I can do is sit on the sidelines, an innocent spectator cheering her on.

Nothing is worse in my mother's world than the evil that preys on the young. Men just like Graham Spaulding whose name can make you shiver with anxiety. Men like the one with the piercing green eyes and the puppy named Chase, whose name my mother cares not to remember, but in actuality will never regret.

The men with eyes that scream with danger. That should be accompanied by flashing neon lights and sirens to alert the world of their presence.

Whose eyes don't offer comfort the way your mother's do, don't warm when they see you first thing in the morning or give you butterfly kisses before bed.

I somehow knew the eyes that filled me with terror would be the last that I saw. Andy Deaver believed he would meet a similar fate. That Graham Spaulding's eyes would be the last he ever saw. Unlike me, Andy Deaver was old enough and wise enough to recognize the man Graham Spaulding was. And he almost escaped. But not fast enough.

He was lucky though. Damaged, injured, scarred for life but lucky none the less. Someone had been smiling down on him.

I wonder why_ I_ wasn't so lucky. Why he gets to live and I had to go. Why his life crosses my mother's now and mine will continue to run parallel for many years to come.

Maybe it all comes down to destiny. And luck has absolutely nothing to do with it. Maybe Andy's destiny was to be found alive. Perhaps there's greatness he's destined for just around the corner. And maybe my greatness, my destiny is to do exactly what I'm doing.

"_You're my angel,"_ my mother used to say as she tucked me in at night. _"My golden haired, ballet dancing angel."_

Maybe she_ was_ always right. What happened to me was pre-determined at birth. Six years was all I was allocated. That I was sent to my mother for only that amount of time before being taken to be exactly what I am.

Her guardian angel.

Watching over her and lending her my wings.


	7. Silent Partner

**Chapter Six – Silent Partner**

"_And you're speaking from experience."_

My mother _was _married once.

She was eighteen years old and the man was my father.

She fell for him instantly. He had a motorcycle, and a leather jacket and a million grievances for a world that simply didn't understand him.

My mother liked that. She understood it, and consequently understood the complexities in him other girls shied away from. And when he promised her the world with those soulful eyes of his, things they would do, the places they would see. Promises of everything she'd always wanted, she had no reason to disbelieve him.

There were two weeks of wedded bliss in which my mother shared her world with the man who held her fragile heart carefully in both hands. Her hopes and dreams, her fears, her past hurt. He was privy to it all.

She couldn't seem to stop herself when he looked at her the way he did, begging with his eyes to share the deepest, most well buried parts of herself with him. He had unlocked a heart closed to the world for far too long and he had climbed deep inside, burrowing into corners of her that no other living soul had been granted the power to see.

His promises were short-lived though. And I wonder how naïve my mother could have been to think at eighteen a man could promise a world he had yet to see himself.

I forgive her naivety because in a way that's what being young is all about. Learning who to trust. Learning right and wrong. And ultimately learning that what a man promises and what he is capable of delivering are two entirely different things.

It only took four months for Samantha Spade to lose her faith in men. Four short months to start her on the tormented path of doubting every promise, of distrusting the world and of closing her heart to any future pain.

The man that knew all my mother's secrets left on a cold wet fall day. He was never one for confrontation, and a note scrawled on her own powder pink writing paper was the only farewell my mother was to get.

She read it three times. Then a fourth and a fifth and with a sinking heart she realized what it all really meant. She cursed herself for allowing him to break down the walls and fences she had spent years meticulously constructing. And it had been so easy for him. He had said he loved her. It was the first time anyone had ever said those words to her. And it had only taken moments after that for him to crumble defenses she had spent a life time fortifying. She despised him for his power.

She crawled into bed that night tired and lost. A renewed sense of being, an identity she had created for herself as his wife, snatched away from her in a single heartbeat. Who knows, maybe he had taken it all with him, a souvenir for his travels, wherever they took him.

My mother's anger manifested itself in a torrent of tears that soaked her pillow. Her dreams had been shattered in the blink of an eye by a man who knew her intimately, knew her better than anyone ever had before.

It was that night a decision was formulated in that lonely bed, in that barren apartment. A decision never to let another man have that sort of power over her. The power to take her heart when he went on his way and to leave her drowning in loneliness. Completely vulnerable. A shadow of who she really was.

She would go somewhere new. She'd always liked California with its promise of eternal sunshine. She could start her life over again where the memories and the past were as scarce as the rain.

Samantha Spade left Wisconsin behind two days later without so much as a glance behind her.

Eighteen years old, completely alone and unsuspectingly pregnant.

Two bags by her side.

And one very broken heart.


	8. Snatch Back

You know the drill, read and review it's good to know you're out there! Enjoy.

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**Chapter Seven – Snatch Back**

My mother hates the park.

Actually it's more of a morbid fear than a loathing. She pretends she hates it anyway. Hate is much easier to explain and justify than fear.

It seems more children, just like Abby Buckman, go missing from crowded playgrounds than anywhere else.

It appears the grandest of impossibilities, a sure fire way to get caught. There are _always_ people everywhere, at least one pair of eyes that's bound to see something and yet no one seems to really see anything at all.

A hundred witnesses and not one clue.

Does that simply prove how self-absorbed people really are? That a child can literally disappear right under their noses and no one sees a thing.

Samantha Spade used to watch the news and blame the parents a long time ago. How could they be so careless to lose their own child? How could they turn their gaze away long enough for their child to vanish into thin air? She didn't understand at all until years later when she became the parent who by her own judgment had carelessly lost her own child.

My mother is dying as she works this case. Her composure so close to faltering.

The blonde haired, blue eyed little girl that stares down from the old whiteboard is too familiar for her liking and she's looking right at her, begging my mother to find her.

In a way every case tugs on a familiar heart string and it's my disappearance all over again no matter how different the circumstances actually are. But Abby Buckman's disappearance tugs a little harder than all the rest.

It's the visual likeness that scares my mother and strengthens her resolve to determine exactly what happened in that Central Park playground.

She feels haunted by the photo. It's all too similar to the one she recalls is buried deep in a box in the back of her bedroom cupboard. She'll find it later she decides and maybe, just maybe if her heart permits, make room for its silver frame on a table or a bookcase somewhere.

She does find the photo later. Much later, after Abby Buckman is reunited with her emotional parents and the necessary paperwork is filed.

It's just where my mother suspected, at the bottom of a box that has long since been neglected. Hidden under piles of clothes for fear of what emotions will be unleashed once it is opened.

It's Samantha Spade's Pandora's Box, with a lid at least for the time being, best left shut. The emotions will be released, to be faced one day in the not to distant future I can only hope. But today is not that day.

My mother needs that photo though, to remind herself of the differences between Abby Buckman and myself. She needs to reassure herself that she hasn't already forgotten.

It feels like a victory to me tonight.

A tiny celebration of such a seemingly insignificant step to an unknowing eye.

But in seven years there have been no photos. They were swept into a box before my mother moved to New York and have been there ever since. There have been no glances at that box that houses my entire life, or urges to delve into its various contents.

And I take my victories where I can.

The photo rests proudly on her nightstand tonight after tears are unleashed and just as quickly reigned in. The quickness of their fall into oblivion means nothing to me.

The tears were there. I recognized them. I counted each one. Accumulated them in my own heart as recognition of a triumph I'm not likely to forget.

I watch my mother while she sleeps. Smile at her from up above while a different, more naïve me, smiles at her from her nightstand. There are smiles all round tonight to keep the nightmares away.

She's taken the tiniest of steps today and it feels like the longest of miles.

For so long I existed in nothing more than dreams and memories.

And when you exist that way, what proof is there you've ever really been alive at all?

Tiny kisses are blown as they are each and every night.

And tonight a silent congratulation for a step we both needed her to take.

She did well today.


	9. Little Big Man

**Chapter Eight – Little Big Man**

My mother doesn't smile anymore.

Not the way she used to anyway. She had the most beautiful smile I had ever seen that reached all the way from her eyes to her soul. And you knew, you just knew, every time she smiled at you, you were everything.

Her smile was powerful beyond belief. Bruises always paled faster, wounds healed quicker, tears dried sooner when she smiled. I felt like nothing was ever as bad as it seemed the second that she smiled.

My father made her smile for the briefest time.

Allowed the smiles beauty and power to seep into his restless heart.

She understood him with that smile in a way no one ever had before. She asked no questions, demanded no answers, just understood it all.

Somehow he couldn't help himself. He was captivated. Drawn in as if under some kind of spell only she could cast.

He married her because he knew then and there that he needed that smile forever. He needed that smile to belong to him.

But his attention span was short. His need for adventure and freedom greater than any power the smile of one woman could hold over him.

He left a note, because that was the only way to do it. If he looked at her, he knew he would never leave.

The day he left he took a part of my mother's smile with him tucked away somewhere safe in the pocket of his leather jacket. No matter where he went, or who he met he'd always have the smile she had given to him.

Jack knew my mother's smile too.

Held onto it as if it were a lifeline that could reel him in from the misery he had descended into. He clung to it, like my father, recognizing its power to temporarily at least mend a heart misunderstood for far too long.

There were times when she would look at him, and just smile. And he thought in those moments, just maybe if that woman kept smiling at him that way everything in his life would be ok.

It was ok for Jack. But not for my mother.

Another piece of her smile faded the day Jack ended whatever it was they had. She'd lost it to him forever, to keep in a dark corner of his memory with his empty promises.

That smile was never really meant to be Jack's or my father's or mine for that matter. It doesn't belong to either of them although they both took parts when they left her behind.

These days it seems that smile, the one that could light up the moon and the stars is just not there anymore. There's still a trace of it. But it's just a mere shadow of what it used to be. An innuendo of a smile that once was.

I wonder if I selfishly stole the best part of my mother when _I _left her behind just like my father and Jack. If by sheer need her smile was the part of her I took with me and in doing so robbed the world of something so beautiful.

I didn't mean for that to happen. I just wanted something so familiar to comfort me, make me feel like I really had come home. I needed that smile of hers that I thought belonged only to me because without that smile this would not have ever been home.

What's left for her is a smile that comforts victims, or their families or a stressed out co-worker. But it's foreign and she knows it too. She's looked in the mirror and wondered exactly when it vanished. Who was responsible for its disappearance?

I think it's time I gave my mother back her smile. She needs it more than I do now. She needs to feel alive again, even if I'm not. She'll smile at me everyday. I know she will because she has my picture on her nightstand and million more in her head.

And I just know there's a certain blue-eyed co-worker who hangs out each day just waiting for her to throw a glance his way and smile at him.

I thank God he's patient.

Because one day Samantha Spade _will _smile.

And he'll be certain that smile belongs to him.


	10. In Extremis

**Chapter Nine – In Extremis **

My mother is _always _Samantha.

Never just Sam.

There were only two people who were ever granted permission to call her Sam.

Jack was one of them.

He had asked her one night while they were alone together at the office, working closer than was strictly necessary. _"Why does nobody call you Sam?"_ he had asked glancing sideways at her looking for an answer to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps a tiny glimpse into the past of this woman that had long since intrigued him and drawn him to her unexpectedly.

She had studied him closely before answering, an internal debate raging over just how much of her past she was willing to share with this man.

But what they had, whatever sordid relationship they were sharing was new, and her bitter heart simply wasn't willing to let him in until she knew he wasn't going to stomp out her faith in love all over again.

_"I don't really know," she chose her words carefully. "I always hated it when my mom called me that and nobody has since then."_

She lied.

_"Can **I** call you Sam?" _Jack had asked.

And for some reason she couldn't possibly deny him. Not when he was looking at her that way, begging for a tiny piece of her heart.

Maybe she nodded. Maybe she agreed. Whatever happened, she became Jack's Sam that night. In much the same way years earlier she had become my father's.

Unlike Jack, my father had never asked. He never knew her as anything else. She was Sam from the moment he saw her to the moment he left her behind.

_His _Sam.

Who knew the very worst about him and loved him anyway.

_"I used to hate when my mother called me Sam. But when you say it, for some reason, I love it. I want to hear you say it forever,"_ my mother had told him one night as they lay together beneath a cloudless sky and mapped out their lives with the stars.

When forever came, Sam Spade was gone too.

She didn't need to be reminded every time someone called her name that she'd been left entirely alone. So she became Samantha again. And she vowed that no man was to ever be given the privilege of shortening her name unless he proved himself first. Unless she could trust him not to play wicked games with her heart.

And she kept that promise to herself until Jack came along and weakened that part of her that for so long had refused to let anyone in.

Now, now there's Martin who by the end of the case looked so broken she was afraid he might just cry right in front of her.

Martin, with his soul searching eyes, eternal optimism and his unfaltering determination to be a part of the already well established team.

He is already worming his way into her heart and thoughts, into places she swore no man would ever be granted access to again. He is breaking down barriers designed purposefully to keep men away. And he seems to be doing it all with such ease. So unintentionally that she didn't see it coming and she is almost angry with him for doing so.

It scared her sometimes, the way she thought of him. How she wondered if there was something building between them that was deeper than the friendship and colleague camaraderie that they currently possessed.

He had called her Sam today, and she couldn't let it go.

She wouldn't allow _him_ to call her Sam.

_"It's Samantha. Nobody calls me Sam." _

"Jack calls you Sam all the time."

"Well, Jack's the boss, in case you haven't noticed."

Not yet anyway.

I feel sorry for him. Trying to make her trust him, to recognize him the way he's aching to be recognized. I wish I had the power to reassure him that all she needs is time.

That eventually she _will_ be his.

That one day, _he'll_ be allowed to call her Sam.

_His _Sam.


	11. Midnight Sun

**Chapter Ten – Midnight Sun**

My mother wonders if Martin has a past.

An unhappy childhood that he wishes he could forget. A failed marriage that has left him utterly heart broken. Perhaps a secret lost child of his own that he can't quite let go of.

Samantha Spade knows everyone has a past. Some secret buried deep inside, lurking, just waiting for a chance to make an unwelcome appearance in the present to derail a life believed to have finally been on a track that's right for a change.

She's taken to watching Martin. Studying him intensely when she thinks he isn't looking, trying to decipher the complexities, to determine exactly what past secret lurks behind those beautiful blue eyes.

Occasionally he catches her looking at him that way.  
_  
"What?"_ he always queries searching her own eyes for answers in the game she seems to be playing with him. He's not sure what the game is. What he's supposed to do, he doesn't know the rules.

_"Nothing."_

It's always nothing.

_"Just thinking."_

He doesn't ask more questions but he continues to wonder all the same.

There's something about Samantha Spade. An enigma he is determined to get to the bottom of.

She confuses him with her coy smiles and friendly banter. The way she always stands slightly too close to him and yet he still feels a million football fields away from her.

And the way she looks at him. Like she's scoping him out. Trying to take him and turn him inside out so she can see what he's really all about. It unnerves him and at the same time he can't get enough of it.

He'll ask her out one of these days, for a drink, or dinner, or a movie. First he has to work up the courage. Maybe when he does, then he'll get the chance to really figure her out.

My mother knows the effect she has on men. She'd have to be blind not to notice the way they look at her and it makes her comfortable to know she is the one in the power seat. She made that decision after my father. He was the one to rob her of her heart, and her faith in men.

She knows that Martin wants her, that he's simply too scared, too intimidated maybe to take the first step. She leaves him for the time being. But if she's admitting it only to herself and the silence of the night, she wants him too.

She needs to play these games first. Has to give herself that power, to know the dark secrets and weaknesses that he possesses. The kind of things that if it came to the end would be the cause of her broken heart.

If she has learnt nothing else from her past, my mother has learnt falling without a safety net is simply setting yourself up to be hurt, that you need to know how to stop her heart breaking before it's broken beyond repair.

Tonight she goes home, Greg Pritchard's life of secrets playing in her mind, a movie on permanent repeat.

She wonders, not for the first time how a man can say _"I love you"_ and mean it with every fiber in his heart and soul but then have secrets, so big that they haunt every breath he takes, echo in every step he walks.

Greg Pritchard was forced to be one of those men.

Jack Malone chose to be one.

Even now, my mother still lies awake at night and wonders how Jack could have held _her_ and loved _her _with the deepest sincerity when by all accounts he loved his wife too.

She is certain that Martin is not one of those men with secrets so deep that shadows follow them wherever they go. She knows Martin is different. She knows he is honest and open and if only she could find the strength within herself to ask she wouldn't need to spend hours in the office silently looking for the answers in his eyes to satisfy her curious heart.

She should ask him. Stop these childish games she has been playing for far too long already but there's something that stops her.

It's fear.

An almost foreign concept to Samantha Spade these days when it comes to men because she possesses that infinite power. She has them when she wants them. When she needs them. It's never really about them.

And Martin isn't like that.

She's drawn to him not by choice but by a magnet pulling her towards him leaving her no other direction to go. And that's what really scares her.

He's reeling her in without even trying.

She's lost her power.

She wants _him_. She needs _him_.

_It's all about him._


End file.
